


The Amazing Duplicating VR Glitch

by 12drakon



Series: Shiny [9]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Hacking, Implied Sexual Content, Implied Violence, Multi, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-09 00:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7780483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/12drakon/pseuds/12drakon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7067452">a VR surprise involving Jazz, a sparkly magic marker, and four Prowls</a>, the two officers <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7622290/chapters/17351674">used the same duplicating glitch for war effort</a>. And then, the Autobots researched the glitch in much detail. Here are their findings…</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Amazing Duplicating VR Glitch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dragonofdispair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/gifts).



  1. The virtual reality avatar is set up to emulate a mech’s body, except for the processor and spark.
  2. The mech-VR interface uses some of the same tech as placing sparks and brain modules into newly built frames, and some ‘translation’ protocols for different-bodied avatars (like wolf’s four limbs, owl’s keen hearing, pony magic).
  3. Two sets of data from two avatars of the same mech have a lot of redundancy in them, because bodily sensations aren’t completely different from situation to situation - up to 100% redundancy. (At least in theory, using Teletraan, when identical avatars are in two identical instances of the same exact scene, doing the same thing).
  4. All mechs can multitask to a degree, and thus deal with data from two avatars doing very similar things.
  5. However, spawning the second avatar has the potential to be physically overwhelming (all bodily sensations are twice as strong), and mentally aggravating (as if two people are incessantly interrupting the mech).
  6. Before these effects can even begin, Teletraan (or lesser AI’s) safety routines, working together with the sleeping mech’s processor, disperse the second avatar (or prevent its appearance), so it can’t threaten the mech’s mental health or cross his pain threshold.
  7. A mech can learn to juggle two avatars, but Ratchet and Wheeljack think that in most cases, the process would be long and rather unpleasant.
  8. Wheeljack once blurted out his plans to weaponize the glitch and make the Decepticons insane by forcing them to use multiple avatars.
  9. In response Optimus gently lectured Wheeljack on the ethics every time they’d met, until the engineer sent him a detailed essay explaining which parts of the Autobot Code that torture would violate.
  10. Prowl’s tactical AI can sort similarities and differences between dozens of situations - so he can support two dozen data streams from different avatars.
  11. Prowl finds the multiple-avatar experience pleasantly immersive; he compares it to a human eating rice by the spoonful, rather than grain-by-grain.
  12. Jazz at one point dealt with multiple personalities by partitioning his processor with firewalls (“doublethink”), but broke the firewalls down during the VR crisis. He hates the thought of reinstalling the partitions again to run multiple avatars.
  13. However, Jazz’s infiltration protocols, his skillset for juggling partitions, and Prowl’s advice helped him learn how to use two or three avatars at once. He’s pretty sure it didn’t drive him insane, though between hacks and nightmares, it is anyone’s guess how healthy any mech is at the moment.
  14. Especially Jazz.
  15. It’s possible for Blaster and Soundwave to process multiple avatars through their symbiont protocols. So can their symbionts.
  16. Since both teams contain six symbionts, the maximum number their frames allow, someone on the team must block the spark bond for other mechs to process an additional avatar - up to six total.
  17. It’s possible for combiner mechs like the Protectobots and Combaticons to process two avatars, the second taking the place of Defensor or Bruticus in their mind; they can’t juggle as many as a symbiont team, because combiner team bonds aren’t as strong.
  18. Spark twins or triplets - Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, Reflector - can quickly learn to process two or three avatars, because they already know how to deal with the second data set streaming through the spark bond.
  19. Likewise, spark-bonded mechs like Mirage and Hound can learn the art of duplication easier than others.
  20. All bonded mechs have to block their bonds to process an additional avatar. They can process additional avatars simply because they already have practice juggling multiple data threads from multiple bodies. Training like Jazz’s would allow for more avatars than a mech has bonds to block.
  21. An accidentally opened bond can confuse, distract, or even hurt a mech who was blocking that bond to deal with multiple avatars at the time.
  22. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe once landed in the medbay with severe glitches when they circumvented a lesser AI’s safety routines to deliberately cause pain to themselves. Ratchet still doesn’t understand the full extent of their hack, and suspects someone helped them with it, but they aren’t telling.
  23. “Can Defensor enter the VR and duplicate?” is a question Wheeljack will never again utter in Ratchet’s presence.
  24. Teletraan runs many non-player characters at once, and if you poke an NPC, it winces as if it feels; but does an NPC _really_ feel?
  25. Prowl says running multiple avatars is like parallel-processing separate data streams; Jazz compares it to a symphony where all instruments play as one; Sunstreaker says, “It’s trippy allright.”
  26. The author of this story at one point played two World of Warcraft characters (a warrior and a priest) at once, using two interfaced computers and an ever-growing set of avatar-coordinating if-then macros; it was trippy alright. (So has co-author of this series and agrees!)
  27. If two mechs plug cables before entering the VR, and then interface within, their avatars coordinate so very closely they might as well be shared by a single processor; Optimus once told Ratchet that’s what he imagines when he says, “Till all are one.”




End file.
